The dusty grey glow of dawn gave Dex's small bedroom a metallic sheen. He got up, turned on a small light that added a little gold to the silver light. He slowly moved himself on his arms to the bathroom, showered and put on his legs.
They were made of a soft metallic material derived from spider silk that Dex knew was also used in soldiers body armour. They had simple electronics that automatically controlled his gait and movement by sensing his brain’s intentions. He had worn them all his life and was very used to them, but still he stood warily, never fully trusting them since the knees had unlocked a few weeks ago throwing him backwards.
He carefully walked to the central dining room. Karma was already up from her room and eating breakfast at a long bench. Dex noticed that while she was wearing the same Father’s House garb as him; grey and dull, she had added a purple and red paisley scarf tied over her mass of copper corkscrew curls. Her tiny elfin face stared intently into her breakfast bowl.
‘Morning me raggle-taggle gypsy-o’ said Dex cheerfully.
She looked up sharply ‘Why'd you call me that?’.
‘The headscarf, you know, the old song?‘ He attempted to sing a bit, but trailed off under her icy stare.
‘No offence?’. He ventured.
‘None taken’. She said and resumed staring into her cereal, stabbing it with her spoon.
She was not a morning person, he thought. He looked at the clock. It was 8am.
‘Time to go back in time.’ he said with a theatrical air.
They headed outside into a bright but damp morning. The air was full of the buzzing of insects. Dex and Karma wrapped their arms around themselves and ran to a small stone pier by the river. They waited in silence, looking around and behind them tensely.
‘It’s not true they’re attacking people? I heard more stories last night. Bodies found, half eaten, in bug nests.’ whispered Karma.
‘Who knows? My theory is instinct made the bugs avoid us for thousands of years but I think they are starting to realize that as they’ve got bigger, we’ve started to look smaller and less able to swat them.’ He looked around him again just as they heard the rhythmic tuc-tuc of an approaching riverboat.
‘Finally.’ said Karma with relief. She jumped up and ran to the pier edge. A young man on the riverboat threw her a rope. She tied it up as the riverboat pulled in to the pier. The young man opened a gate and lowered a metal gangway. As soon as the gangway came down they hopped on with relief. Dex walked with Karma to the front of the boat and took a deep breath. The riverboat pulled away and headed up the river between busy quays full of traders, their carts and bustling crowds. Ragged men in small currachs slowly moved out of the way of the bigger riverboat. Some contained whole families huddling in improvised tents.
‘Ah, the sun is shining and the air is actually fresh-ish, I can even smell the Guinness brewing.’ Said Dex cheerily.
‘They’ve just burned the hops at the brewery. But I guess this does count as a good day by Irish standards.’ muttered Karma grudgingly.
‘More new bunting. It is not as if the entire country has forgotten the fecking thing.’ she pointed at the line of bright flags billowing all along the river in the morning breeze.
‘We will be able to get off work to attend though. The last Eucharistic Congress was generations ago. The pope’s not even been seen for 10 years or something.’ Said Dex.
‘It is not like we are off work at all, day off my arse.’ groaned Karma. ‘I am not even awake yet, I don’t have the energy to argue with you.’
‘You always have the energy to argue.’ grinned Dex.
They heard a blaring sound from the quays and looked around to see traders with carts running into side alleys. The sudden chaos ended and the once busy quayside was eerily empty.
‘There they are, do you see the red?’ Dex pointed at a crowd of men, women and children in hard black hats and bright red jackets riding at full gallop up the quay. Ahead of them ran twenty or so giant brown hunting wolf-spiders.
‘The hunt out having a jolly good time helping rid us of the terrible problem of urban foxes.’ said Dex with a touch of a posh accent.
‘Yay.’ said Karma without conviction.
They heard a piercing scream. The hunt suddenly stopped and huntsmen ran into the group of hounds waving a stick at them and shouting. They heard a wail and looked to see a a woman being held back by three others by the wall of the quay.
‘Oops, guess they mistook a child for a fox again.’ Karma looked away in disgust. ‘Oh well, plenty more where that one came from, we women are just for baby making as far as the bastarding church is concerned.’ muttered Karma with venom so only Dex could hear. He looked down into the mercury coloured water.
‘Real life is shit.’ said Dex. ‘Sooner we’re in be-movie-land the better I say.’
They got into work, grabbed cups of tea and started on their paperwork from the tours the night before. Their rabbit and dragon phones played a fighting game on the desk around them.
After a while Dex said quietly to Karma ‘Do you think we should try and find her? I don’t think the police really care.’
Karma didn't look up for a while then said. ‘This isn't some be-movie Dex, we can't just fly into action and track her down using our magic powers. We should not get ourselves noticed by the I's. They are watching us you know.'
He leaned closer to her and whispered ‘we'd not be getting in the Irish Inquisitions way, if we find anything useful, we'll hand it over to them, we'd be helping. By they way, if you get calling them the I's like they are always watching, they don't like it. Be careful what you say.’
Karma looked up at him. ‘You told them all there is to tell last night. We don't know anything. That’s the end of it.’
‘Well, we were her best friends, we knew everything about her, didn't we? I mean, don't we? Sorry, present tense.’
‘Dex, we should just hope for the best and not get in the pigs' way, we don't want to attract any unwanted attention from them, especially from the ecclesiastical arm.’ said Karma, looking up at him briefly, her eyes flashing briefly from under her tangled hair. He stopped talking about it then.
For lunch, they hopped back on the Liffey riverboat and jumped off at the ancient Ha'penny bridge, now a shrine to the virgin Mary, full of candles and statues. They went up the steps into Merchant's Arch and the dark, grubby doorway of Charlie's Cheeses.
They stood at the door a while until a chime rang to call their attention. Two yellow plastic seats flashed their names and they went to sit down. Dex sat in the corner. ‘Rachel’s favourite seat. She liked the view of the river.’ he said.
‘Oh look, a new recruit’ said Karma nodding towards another table across the room.
Someone had hung a plastic sign saying ‘Good Luck With The New Job’ over a group of loud people. The focus was a young man of about 16 in a suit. He was flanked by his parents and other relatives and friends. The atmosphere was cheerful, but his mother was discreetly drying tears away with a napkin.
‘Off to Ariadne I guess. That'd be my version of hell.’ said Karma.
‘Just a modern Irish wake really, like the one's in that Famine be-movie, he'll likely not come out of there again. At least we've never had to say goodbye to our parents.’ said Dex and looked at Karma. Karma looked away and said nothing. They sat down. The virtual menu appeared in front of him.
‘Order Up! A-ping salad’ said Dex with a smile. A plate appeared from inside the table. It featured long, black, crispy-looking fries, and assorted greens.
‘Want one?’ said Dex, holding the biggest and blackest up to Karma. ‘They say they'll make you beautiful, well more beautiful of course.’
Karma shuddered. ‘I'll never eat spider, I don't care how they taste, or how cheap the protein is for feeding us poor peasants. Ugh, it's disgusting.’
Dex just shrugged. ‘That guy going to work in Ariadne will know all about these soon. He'll see millions of tarantula while they're still alive and running in and out of their little holes in the ground. Or sitting behind a huge row of big fat Golden Orb spiders, silking them.’
‘Stop!’ said Karma, ‘I hate the bloody things. You'll put me off lunch all together.’ She looked at the menu intently.
‘Weird to be only the two of us here instead of three.’ said Dex.
‘I’ve tried calling Rachel already this morning but I just get this message says she is off grid, and the only place that could be is in a be-movie.’ mused Karma, looking around absently.
‘Karma, do you think Rachel is stuck out there, like in a swamp in Louisiana 1798 or something, not able to get a message out?’.
‘Doubt it, anything dangerous happens in there, she would just pop out in the lodge. That’s what the fail-safes are there for. Unless she is hiding in there, on purpose.' Karma said this while chewing a nail. Her dragon phone was sitting beside her imitating her every move.
Dex spoke to his rabbit phone, sitting beside him, licking it's grey and white paw. ‘Jack, where's Rachel?’ The rabbit just shrugged and resumed licking.
‘I don’t get how they can’t just do a be-movie simulation of her last movements and extrapolate where she went.’ Dex said, munching another leg while tapping one of his own metal ones absent-mindedly.
Karma spoke while chewing a straw ’Well, obviously that the first thing the police must have done, but even if she didn’t write up her log and just went into a random be-movie, they should still be able to track her. Those bastards always know where everyone is, I think they are lying to us, but I don’t know why.’ said Karma quietly.
Dex jumped in ’There is no way Rachel could hack her signal so they couldn't track her. No way. And she wouldn’t do it anyway, she’d not break the law or anything. She was always a deep thinker, but not rebellious or whatever.’
‘Hm...’ said Karma, but then just looked out the window and picked her nail. She flicked on the heads up display in front of her to check the latest meeja gossip.
Dex looked at the menu again. ‘We sat right here yesterday, she seemed... well normal, not like she was planning to drop off the grid’. He looked around a little. ‘She did say one odd thing though. She said make sure her sandwich was always ordered here every day, no matter what. Now it seems ominous. No matter what.’
Karma put her hand briefly on his and said ‘She is fine, wherever she is, it's just some mix-up, you'll see. That sandwich of hers will be ordered again soon.’
Dex, sat up straight again and exhaled. ‘I know, I know. Right! In her honour, why not order her favourite sandwich now, disgusting though it is?’
Karma said, ‘Fair enough, I'll give it a go, at least there's no spider in it. Order Up! Rye bread, pickles, coleslaw and chocolate spread with sprinkles on top’. She moved her arms aside on the table and waited for it to pop up. ‘Really vile stuff, the girl's no taste at all’. It appeared from inside the table as normal, but then the menu flickered and turned green. The screen opened onto a picture of the three of them standing in an archway all laughing and hugging around a garden gnome. There was a number on the screen: 081320920X. Then it flicked back to the menu.
‘Holy hell, that was fecking weird.’ said Karma. ‘What?’ said Dex. ‘The menu changed into a picture of us and Rachel, then it said this big number. What the hell is that supposed to mean?’. Then Karma jumped ‘It's a message, she's sent us a clue to find her! She's hiding, and she wants us to find her. Wow.’
Dex immediately felt relieved. He realised he's been afraid she was dead, now that fear was lifted off his shoulders and it felt good. He laughed. ‘A mystery to solve, what a jolly dashing adventure my trusty Dr. Watson’. Karma shushed him and raised her eyebrows to warn him to stay quiet. ‘Time to get back to our real jobs. I'll meet you outside’. She headed towards the toilets.
Dex stepped out onto the quay by the ha'penny bridge. The day seemed bright and the flags were flapping very quickly along with the gulls who were reeling away shrieking with alarm.
A shadow fell on Dex. He heard a deep hum then felt a wave of heat and pressure. A copter dropped like a black beetle from the sky in front of him and dark gloved hands pulled him inside and shot upwards into the clouds.
Dex wrists and ankles were quickly tied and he was pushed onto his knees. He saw two men at each of his shoulders. One roughly pushed his face down and forward again.
The hatch door wasn't shut and he was swaying awkwardly near to opening on the floor of the copter while the wind buffeted him. He was too scared to look anywhere but at his hands, forced into a praying position by the cuffs.
‘How long has it been since your last confession?’ asked a detached voice. Dex recognised it was the Inquisitor Felt he had met the previous night. Automatically, Dex said ‘Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been 3 days since my last confession’. This was met with silence. Dex felt the copter turn and he almost fell out. He threw himself on his side on the ground in the small cabin. The other two men said and did nothing.
‘Son, be not afraid. I only want to ask your help. You have never sinned against the church and I know you are a good boy and will do the right thing. I believed you last night when you said you knew nothing of your friend’s disappearance, and do you know why I believed you?’
The wind was icy and blowing into Dex's eyes, he couldn't wipe them, only press them shut as they ran. ‘why, father?’ he managed.
‘Because I know when someone is a liar. The Devil is the father of Lies.' He leaned closer to Dex's ear and whispered 'I have seen him and faced him down.’ He then sat back and raised his voice again and said ‘no, you are a good boy, I can tell. Now, show me how good you can be and confess what you were shown in the restaurant.’ Dex could see the priest enjoyed making people do things they would rather not. Like betray a friend. The priest was fingering a crucifix around his neck. He felt some outside force compel him to answer. ‘It said, ‘ 081320920X’ he hung his head.
The priest blessed himself then, like the confession was over. ‘Very good my son. Now, what do you think that means?’ Dex didn't want to say it meant his friend was alive and trying to reach them. He suddenly realised they hadn't seen the picture of the three of them and Rachel's gnome. He had not even had time to think about the meaning. He had managed to keep something back.
He said, ‘I don't know father.' The priest just stared at him. He looked at the open door, wishing he could jump, knowing that was stupid and crazy. He could feel his rabbit Jack moving about in his pocket, Karma was looking for him. He'd only been gone less than a minute.
‘I will contact you again soon Dex. Dex. short for Dexter?’ said the priest. ‘From the Latin dextra, meaning right. I pray you find the right answer for me and your church, my son’. He waved at the pilot and pointed down. Dex's bonds were cut and he was dropped out on the side street beside the quay. He wavered, a little in shock, around the corner to see Karma looking impatient and then suddenly concerned. A Liffey ferry arrived and she helped him on.
‘Where the hell did you go to?’ said Karma.
‘I was just around the corner there, waiting for you’ he said slowly, but shook his head slightly. He saw her understand as her face shifted from annoyance to wariness. Then she said. ‘Are you feeling OK? You don't look at all well, sorry you ate the spider Little Miss Muffet?’
He answered. ‘No, I'm fine, I'll be fine, it's nothing.’
Karma said carefully. ‘OK. We'd better hurry, we've a tour in 20 minutes and we still have to get into costume.’ She glanced over the river and saw the black copter gliding silently away.